Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Collection of Papers (1860s-1920) of Civil War Veteran Loring Dunnells of Cornish, Maine


Collection of over 100 manuscript items that belonged to Loring Dunnells of Cornish, Maine; they span from the 1860s to 1920 or beyond.  See an alphabetical list of people mentioned in the document at the end of this post.  The papers consist of:
  • pension documents relating to Loring Dunnell's service in the 27th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment during the Civil War
  • deeds and other instruments
  • receipts for housing and provisions
  • promises to pay
  • miscellaneous
From brief online research, hopefully correct:  [corrections and additions welcome!]

Loring Dunnells was born August 15, 1838 at Shapleigh, Maine, the son of David and Mary (Brown) Dunnells.  On September 30, 1862, Loring enlisted in Company H of the Maine 27th Infantry Regiment.  He mustered out at Portland, Maine, on July 17, 1863.

On June 26, 1865 at Parsonsfield, Maine, Loring married Almira B. Weeks, daughter of Samuel and Susan (Eastman) Weeks.  Almira died in 1872.   If they had any children, I didn't find a record of them.

On September 29, 1873, at Freedom, New Hampshire, Loring married Nellie Flora Storer, daughter of George W. Storer and Caroline (Warren) Storer.  Loring and Nellie had, I believe, three children, and they may have raised their granddaughter Reta B. Dunnells, unless Reta was a later child.  She's described as their granddaughter on the 1900 Census of Cornish, Maine.  Children of Loring and Nellie:
  • Callie May Dunnells, (1874-1958)
  • Charles Edwin Dunnells (1875-?); married Edith May Wilbur
  • Fred Clifton Dunnells (1877-1954); married (1) Ellen Clifford (2) Bythe Ethel (Merrill) Rolfe
Loring Dunnells died in 1922 at Cornish, Maine.  If you have corrections and/or additions to the information above or information on any of the people listed at the end of this post, please leave a comment or contact me directly.  

In addition to the Maine Pension Certificate pictured above, 4 other pension items are included.  Whether or not, any of these items deals with Loring's application for his federal pension in 1889, I don't know.  Below, the scrap of paper where Loring wrote down his Civil War service, probably in connection with filling either of his pension applications: 
































An example of one of the legal documents: a deed where Loring sold Joseph Moulton a tract of land in Parsonsfield, Maine in 1867.






















Many of the papers are receipts for the quarterly rental that Loring paid G. W. Adams of Cornish, Maine.   Adams was presumably George W. Adams, a carpenter, painter and mill owner.  An example:


Names included in the collection [there are more, some of them too faint to decipher]

G. W. Adams
B. Bailey
C. E. Bean
John Bennett
? N. Brackett
Howard Brackett
Loring Dunnells, archive owner
Nellie Flora (Storer) Dunnells, wife of Loring Dunnells
E. Farnham
P. A. Gonzalez
John Harper, State Pension Agent
Abel Jellison
J. M. Mason & Son
Ivory C. Morrison
Lucinda B. Morrison
Joseph Moulton
John L. Newell
Henry Pendexter
Pendexter Brothers
W. H. Smith, M.D.
F. C. Smith
Ira C. Seavey
George Storer
O. H. Thompson
Oliver Thurston
Samuel Tripp
Willis Warren
George W. Weeks

Two other posts featured items from this collection:


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